This invention relates to a building construction having a frame structure including girders which are secured against lateral displacement and buckling especially prior to the hardening of the concrete floor slabs.
In one type of building construction, concrete flooring utilizing pre-cast concrete joists are erected on the tops of pre-cast concrete girders attached to vertical concrete columns and thereafter sheets of plywood or other concrete forming materials are supported between the joists to act as forms on which wet concrete is placed. When the concrete has hardened, the forms are removed to expose a completed concrete structure. While such a structure may be practical for short-span construction, in long-span construction the excessive weight of the concrete girders and the resulting difficulty in their transportation and erection makes their use costly. One alternative is, of course, the use of steel girders; but these were not employed in the past in connection with concrete joists because of the inability of those joists to restrain the girders from buckling during construction and before hardening of the concrete slabs. When the slabs have hardened, they form a stiff horizontal diaphragm that prevents lateral displacement of the girder compression flanges. However, when wet and uncured, neither the concrete slabs nor concrete joists have the capability of preventing such lateral displacement.